Per Mark Stein, Denver Nuggets guard and future Hall of Famer Russell Westbrook will decline his player option, making him a free agent for this coming season. That is the first domino to fall after hiring David Adelman as the permanent head coach, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that Westbrook is leaving the Nuggets. Denver can still re-sign him, and Russ outplayed his contract with Denver. He can certainly leverage what was a very productive season into a better contract either with the Nuggets or elsewhere, and this means he’s confident in the results of the hand surgery he underwent at the end of May as well.
Westbrook put up per-game numbers of 13.3 points, 6.1 assists and 4.9 rebounds in Denver last year and was the driving force keeping a largely-ineffective bench afloat. Whether or not Russ comes back to the Nuggets, Denver has to figure out a way to add more playable depth to that bench – nearly 2100 minutes was too much to ask of the 36 year old Westbrook, especially with the workload he had in those minutes. Now Russ will be able to pick his next destination as well as potentially lock in an extra year on a player option. At this point though it means the only bench point guard under contract is Jalen Pickett, which means the new Nuggets GM – whomever it turns out to be – will have to make that reserve floor general position a priority this summer.
